WHEN the Fab Four went to America 50 years ago this month, Daily Express reporter Ivor Davis had a ringside seat to the shenanigans that ensued.

On August 19, 1964, I was woken up at my home in Los Angeles by the phone ringing at six in the morning. It was my editor in London calling to give me the assignment of a lifetime. He wanted me to fly up to San Francisco to cover - from start to finish - a hot British rock 'n' roll group making their first concert tour of North America. The Beatles had landed.

That summer I was the 25-year-old West Coast correspondent of the Daily Express charged with chronicling the vagaries of Hollywood which ranged from the marriages of Elizabeth Taylor to the divorces of Marlon Brando and Cary Grant. Thrown in for good measure was an earthquake, a riot and a shipwreck.

But The Beatles looked set to create a sensation to outstrip all these. After all only six months earlier they appeared on the country's most popular variety hour The Ed Sullivan Show and became an instant hit drawing 74 million viewers.

That said, I raced up to San Francisco with little conception that what I was to witness in 24 cities over the next five weeks would be one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It soon became clear that I would have the sort of unrestricted access to the Liverpool lads unheard of in today's pop music world.

Not only did I have a front-row seat at every one of their sold-out concerts I became part of their intimate entourage. The Beatles were in stretch limo number one with their manager Brian Epstein, I travelled in limo two, along with press officer Derek Taylor.

By night we ate and drank together and because we had adjoining hotel rooms often played cards and Monopoly into the early hours of the morning.

For me, Lennon was the funniest and wickedest of them all

As a result, I saw how they coped with a revolving door of women of all shapes, sizes and ages who came calling and were willing to do more than just hold their hands.

I was there the night a scandal in Las Vegas threatened to jeopardise their tour after 16-year-old twin sisters managed to get into John Lennon's suite for a Beatle party at the Sahara Hotel.

Their anxious mother was so angry after being barred from entering the suite that she called the police to say her daughters were being held against their will. Of course that was not the case but it almost derailed their tour before it had started.

One night Hollywood sex symbol Jayne Mansfield came knocking at their door and wanted to get up close with The Beatles - any Beatle, it didn't really matter. John, George and Ringo succumbed.

She was still with them the next night when a visit to Sunset Boulevard's famous nightclub the Whisky A Go Go turned into a near disaster.

George - after several drinks - lost his temper when an intrusive photographer stuck a camera under his nose. "Bugger off," shouted George and, when the photographer ignored him, tossed his drink at him. It missed the lensman but hit Mamie Van Doren, another statuesque Hollywood actress, thoroughly dousing her decolletage.

Sex symbol Jane Mansfield was desperate to get her hand on a Beatle [ALAMY]

Amid the screaming row that followed, The Beatles and Jayne were hoisted over the crowd and delivered to their limo for a speedy getaway.

Paul seemed to attract most of the beautiful women on tour although he behaved discreetly as he was still romantically involved with actress Jane Asher who was back in England. It didn't stop him from having a fling with model-turned-actress Peggy Lipton who was so smitten by Paul she told me, "I'm going to marry him".

However after the Whisky A Go Go incident The Beatles became much more choosy about which celebrities they would allow into their inner circle. Burt Lancaster, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, Joan Baez, Fats Domino, they liked. Most of the rest were given the cold shoulder.

For me, Lennon was the funniest and wickedest of them all and he revealed he had one secret fear: being called up to do his National Service.

He once told me half-jokingly: "If they had called me up I would have done a bunk, emigrated to Ireland or Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh."

He said he had seen how military service almost destroyed Elvis Presley's career and told me with a straight face: "Look what happened to Elvis when they put him in the army. They stuffed him in a tank and sent him off to fight the Nazis." (Slight exaggeration of course because while Elvis did train in a tank regiment in Texas he was then posted to a cushy American base in Germany.) "If we had gone into the Army," said John, "we would have been separated and never played together again."

As he had been born after 1940 he had nothing to fear but still he had a nervous moment the day a large grey envelope with a government stamp on it landed on his doorstep.

Ivor with George Harrison for whom he was a ghostwriter [PH]

He said he didn't dare open it because he was worried it was his call-up papers. It wasn't. In fact it was the formal letter telling him he (and the rest of The Beatles) were being offered MBEs.

Ringo, meanwhile, revealed that at first he was hesitant about joining The Beatles after Brian Epstein fired their original drummer Pete Best. He told me he felt great loyalty to his mates in his then band Rory Storm And The Hurricanes and worried that joining The Beatles would mean leaving them in the lurch.

"John and Paul came down to see me at Butlin's Holiday Camp in Skegness where we were playing," Ringo recalled. "They said Brian [Epstein] would pay me 25 quid a week and that was big money. So we went out and got drunk on rough cider and that is how I became a Beatle."

One of my tasks was to ghost a column by George but we took a long time to warm to each other. He was taciturn and probably the least comfortable with the onslaught of fame. We had a bit of a bust up early on when he complained that "his" column was rubbish. I responded: "If you bothered to wake up before three in the afternoon and talk to me a bit more it might be a lot more readable." We got on well after that little contretemps.

I would often see one of the world's most famous song-writing partnerships in action and it didn't look very impressive. Paul and John would often sprawl on the floor of their hotel suite surrounded by scraps of paper torn from an exercise book, penning new songs, whistling and humming tunes at each other whenever they could find a spare half hour between concerts, press conferences and fast getaways.

The original Express story [DX]

"Brian was always nagging us to come up with new stuff," said Paul. "We had to meet record contract demands."

In the summer of 1965, I was to be a fly on the wall for their private meet-and-greet with the King himself, Elvis Presley, who after uncomfortable introductions loosened up a little and ended up playing an impromptu jam session with the Fab Four.

The Beatles - particularly John - worshipped Elvis. At the time, although we didn't know it, Elvis envied The Beatles. They had after all knocked him off his top perch in the rock 'n' roll hierarchy.

Elvis was also upset because he felt trapped by a movie contract that forced him to churn out three unimaginative movies a year. On the other hand, The Beatles' first film A Hard Day's Night had become an instant box-office sensation.

Much later John in particular grew disenchanted with The King after Presley visited President Richard Nixon in the White House and cast himself as an unlikely social commentator.

He slammed them in very un-Presley-like words to Nixon, declaring: "They laid the groundwork for many of the problems we are having with young people by their filthy unkempt appearances and suggestive music…" Suggestive? This was Elvis the Pelvis talking, a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black.

Then there was the night we all thought Ringo had been kidnapped but instead he'd been taken on an all-night tour of Indianapolis bars and tourist spots by his cop security detail.

And there was the night The Beatles got falling-down stoned after Bob Dylan introduced them to a particularly strong grade of marijuana in their New York hotel suite.

In my book The Beatles And Me On Tour, I have vividly chronicled the inside story of what unfolded half a century ago. The Beatles were a force of nature and none of us realised then that today they would be bigger than ever.